Howard Zinn and the Virtues of ‘Revisionism’

By Joe Macaré, In These Times Communications Director Last week was the first anniversary of the death of the much-revered author, historian and activist Howard Zinn. By small way of commemoration, all week I’ve been posting links on In These Times' Facebook page to stories on our website written about or by Professor Zinn. As a result, my attention was drawn to a discussion taking place in response to a review of Zinn’s final book The Bomb, originally posted last summer. In it, one of In These Times' small but dedicated band of conservative commentators made the claim that Zinn was “a revisionist, and a propagandist.” This accusation resonates with a passage in another book about "the bomb," one I'm currently reading: Hiroshima in America by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. Subtitled 'A Half Century of Denial' (which will need to be updated, one fears, as we approach 2045), the book is an account not just of how the decision to drop two atomic bombs was made, but how the American political class, media, academy and public have attempted to understand that event, or rather in many cases conceal and justify the truth of it, ever since. The story it tells is a clear example of government decisions made for reasons authorities immediately decided the American people should not know – and of servile mainstream media’s failure to do much more than reassert the official narrative. But truth will out. Hiroshima critics who disputed that narrative were validated in 1978 when private written material by President Harry Truman was unearthed. It emerged that yes, Truman had thought of the bomb in terms of a diplomatic “ace in the hole” to use against the Soviets; that he had known that Japan was considering surrender already; and that he had also been aware that when the Soviets entered the war, it would be the end for Japan, meaning that the bomb was not needed to bring about the end at all. No doubt there are gung-ho neo-conservatives who would still justify dropping two atomic bombs on civilian Japanese populations purely in the name of intimidating the Russians and retaliating for Pearl Harbor and Bataan. Nevertheless, the “revisionists” had been validated in the eyes of anyone paying attention, even if the official narrative has continued to be loudly trumpeted. After recounting this turn of events, Lifton and Mitchell add the following footnote regarding the term “revisionist” as applied to historians: In its original meaning, the term could be applied to anyone challenging the official version of events. But here it becomes associated… with “changing history” in a way that makes America look bad. It may even take on some of the opprobrium of “Holocaust revisionism”… in a way that reverses the actual intent of scholars who raise questions about Hiroshima. “Revisionism” is thus up there with “moral equivalency” as a sin invented by those who wish us all to believe in the myth of American moral infallibility. Both are crimes of which all progressive analysts of history and current events should aspire to being accused. Nowadays, as WikiLeaks has made us acutely aware, we don’t necessarily have to wait for such truths to emerge so many decades after the events in question. WikiLeaks and the Palestine Papers have made public private communications that reveal the truth about U.S. strategic intent much more quickly. No wonder this terrifies our leaders and their media cheerleaders. It necessitates stepping up both rhetoric and repressive action. The term “revisionist” is no longer enough—those who reveal such troubling factual details are now more likely to be called "terrorists," "traitors" and "spies." Those accusations and the government scrutiny that comes with them can be frightening. (Even more so in those cases where scrutiny becomes repression, whether it be Bradley Manning or the Palestinian solidarity activists subpoenaed by the FBI as reported by In These Times in our January cover story.) But it's also a profoundly exciting time: official narratives are becoming harder to maintain. Greg Mitchell, one of the authors of Hiroshima In America, knows as much: After blogging tirelessly about WikiLeaks for The Nation, his next book will be on that very subject.